


Queens and Greens

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Another Chance: Chronicles of DC/Pern [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bay finally has answers for the dragonriders about just what Kitti did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queens and Greens

_[9.27.4/11 AL]_

Bay set the printout away from her, reaching up to rub her eyes to ease the strain on them. She took a minute to finish her klah, grimacing at the colder, bitter flavor, then heaved out a sigh. Her notes -- finally, after all this time -- held the damning proof, and neither Sean nor Sorka were going to enjoy what she had to offer as answers. 

She regretted how intolerably long it had taken to find the answer -- why, Sean had asked when the dragons weren't even a year old yet, and now there were so many young dragons -- but Kitti's notes had held so many more 'how's' than 'why's', and some parts of them had been written only for her own understanding. Combing through the reams of plasfilm it had taken to print them out had simply taken years -- 

And coming up with explanations still wasn't getting answers to Sorka and Sean. Neither would waiting for Pol to get back home to look at her conclusions, he'd been on the same track before being called away. She sighed again, reaching for a scrap of plasfilm and a marker to write a short note to Faranth's rider. 

/Sorka, it's Bay. If you have someone free to fetch me, I finally have information for you on the queens. If you're too busy, we can always just use the comms./

"Mariah!" she called, focusing her attention on her queen, who popped onto the edge of the desk a moment later, cheeping curiously at her. "Take this to Sorka, please love. The redhead with the gold dragon, yes?"

Mariah chirped agreement, stretching out one pincered paw to take the scrap of film before she disappeared again. 

Bless the fire-lizards, Bay thought, not for the first time. She'd heard that those who had moved North were slowly losing their fire-lizard friends, and that thought stung. At least Mariah had always come back to her after a flight, and most of the remaining Southerners still had their friends and the ever-curious wilds, too. 

There hadn't been resources or time to really explore that, either. Pol had theorized that the mentasynth hadn't affected their memories enough. Likely, after flights, the queens went to the beaches they remembered to clutch. And they did not often leave their nests. By the time of Hatching, the bond had thinned too much, Pol had offered.

 _And, males being male, they followed suit to breed,_ Bay had answered, agreeing it was likely.

She sighed ever so softly at the memory. The greens had always been more likely to vanish from their bonded humans, even in the South, being flighty. And… the answer to Sorka and Sean would be addressing the concern over the green dragons, in a related fashion. Bay was not going to enjoy this at all.

Mariah popped back in, empty-pawed, and Bay blinked, puzzled, before Sorka's Duke popped in behind her with another piece of film in one paw. He lit on the edge of her desk and lifted a paw, and Bay took the film out of it. "Thank you, Duke." 

He cheeped, his eyes whirling blue-green, and vanished again. 

/Bay, I'll send Nora. Thank you./ Sorka's note was much like her, quick and to the point, and Bay packed her notes into a satchel to take along, then headed outside to wait.

She did not wait long before Tenneth appeared, well above any potential sled traffic lanes. Nora was very careful to check for those before she spiralled down to a neatly backwinged landing.

"Good to see you, Bay!" Nora called to her.

"And you, Nora. Tenneth, you look lovely, too."

Tenneth spread her wings slightly, dipping her head, and Nora laughed at her. "Don't mind her, Bay. She rose two weeks ago and she's still smug about it. Her color does look wonderful though, doesn't it?" 

Nora held out her hand as Tenneth crouched low and held out her forelimb to help Bay up. This was never the best part of visiting the Weyr, but flying was such a delight that Bay didn't mind. She carefully stepped and pulled herself up behind Nora, catching hold of her waistbelt as soon as she could. Tenneth's ridges pinched a little around her belly and backside, but oh, well. 

"Settled, Bay?" 

"Well enough," she said, chuckling quietly -- and Nora laughed, too, leaning back against her a little. 

"All right, then. Tenneth, let's go home." 

Tenneth rumbled agreement and leapt into the air, her wings beating strongly as she climbed up into the air. " _Between,_ " Nora said, and in the next heartbeat they were in that incomprehensible blackness, and Bay's hands clenched on the belt. 

Every time -- rare though they were -- that she did this, she decided that eight seconds had never felt so long in her entire life. 

She gasped gratefully as they came back into reality, looking down at the Dragon Caves. 

"You've cut more entrances?" 

"Yeah," Nora agreed, "we had to, with as fast as we're getting weyrlings. Getting Cobber and Ozzie and Telgar to come find the best spots to cut in was... well, it was an event. But it's helping a lot. Mostly it's us seniors vacating inside quarters for the new ones -- we don't mind the longer trip, and it's better for the weyrlings to be close together."

"Fairly sound thinking, I'd say…" Bay answered, even as she had reason to be thankful for her findings on the one hand. If the greens…. No, that wasn't an issue.

"We like to hope so," Nora agreed, amused, as Tenneth dropped down to a flat area near the main entrance, settling with a great deal of grace. "Here we are, safe and sound," she said, cheerful enough, "time for us both to drop off." 

"You 'drop' less than I do," Bay pointed out as she carefully shifted around so that she could slide off Tenneth's neck. At least there seemed to be few others around to see her graceless landing, she thought as she stepped well clear so that Nora could dismount. 

Nora was on the ground in a few moments, and she tipped her head a little in that posture that Bay had long-ago learned meant she was talking to Tenneth or another of the dragons. "Sorka's in her usual office," she reported after that moment. "Need a guide?" 

"I think I remember the way," Bay answered. "The real question is, am I telling just Sorka, or all of you senior queens?" 

Nora shrugged just a little. "Faranth didn't say 'come along', so you'd probably better just tell her -- and Sean, he's probably with her by now. She'll tell us." 

Bay nodded, not sure if she was glad of that or unhappy with the way they were shifting to more military behavior -- she'd hoped so much that they were leaving that behind for good with the rest of the FSP -- and headed for Sorka's office in the caves. It was funny, almost, to think of that twelve-year-old girl who had brought her Mariah's egg with an office... but then, Sorka was such a different woman now, at double that many years. 

Sorka was just setting three glasses of water with redfruit slices out on the small table, having come out from behind her desk and arranged three chairs. Sean was studying the Thread charts on the wall, but turned immediately as Bay entered.

"You have answers for us?" Sean asked, his eyes narrowing a little at seeing the set of her face.

"Sean!" Sorka chided him. "Come sit down, be pleasant, and we'll talk business after we've all had a bit to drink."

"Yes, Sean, I do, and thank you, Sorka, I am thirsty." She came to sit down, swinging her satchel into her lap, and reached for the glass closest to her once Sean had come and dropped into a chair. That was such a snapshot of the two of them, she thought to herself as she drank a little of the water. "Pol's well, he's just down in Omaha working with Dinah," she said, suiting herself to Sorka's wont for pleasantries. "How are all of you?" 

"Paul's getting better," Sean said, one shoulder rolling in a slight shrug. "Still barely straight-line flying, Kazeth's wing is still damaged, but... they're well enough. Seems to be getting on with the teacher Rudi sent down to help." 

"We'll have more eggs soon, and Helena," Sorka stressed the name as another poke at Sean, "is structuring training in ways that make perfect sense now… but none of us could quite get to. And between them, they've figured out how to use the eldest weyrlings to guide the newest through that gorging dragonet stage," Sorka told Bay.

"Oh, I'm glad of that," Bay said, and she truly was. "I remember, you all were near your wits' end those first few days."

"Aye, and none of us've the time to tend each babee dragon," Sean agreed. "Getting the elder ones to help there is right brill. Pleasant enough, Sorka?" 

Sorka threw her hands up in the air, then looked pleadingly at Bay. "Is Pol this bad with his pet projects?"

"Sometimes," Bay said, smiling at her quick and affectionate. "I'm sorry it's taken so long, but while Kitti's notes weren't deliberately encoded, they were definitely written as guides for _her_ , not the rest of us.... but I did finally find it. 

"And... well, we don't have to be as angry with her as we thought, Sorka. She **did** deliberately change the queens' ability to process firestone, but not just to keep them home. Or at least, that's what the evidence says, and it does cheer me somewhat." Bay had not enjoyed those months of thinking that Kitti's brilliant mind had been so badly warped by old traditions that she would have handicapped the queens so badly. "From what I found, it was the only thing that was shared solely between the queens and the greens. She had to inhibit the queens' ability to create the stomach acids to process firestone in order to remove the greens' fertility." 

Sorka looked from her to Sean, watching him with her own features carefully neutral. She was relieved to see him reacting with a little more favor than might have been expected… but then, with the queens tossing eggs to the point of driving them all loco, it was almost a relief to know the greens weren't going to add to the cycle.

"So we can tell Paul the green weyrlings get to try stone," Sean said.

"There's no way around it, for the golds?" Sorka asked. She wasn't happy… but their techniques had shown a decided need for a group of low-flying 'safety nets' to protect the ground crews. They had a way that worked for them, even if she would rather flame it high.

Bay shook her head, chewing on her lip. "Maybe if Kitti were still alive, she could see the flaw in her solution and find another one. But... Wind Blossom isn't Kitti -- " She paused, letting Sean's comment of 'Not half' have clear air, before she went on. " -- and I don't think she would even know where to start. We might get something worse than those photophobic whers of hers, or a sterile queen, even if we could manage to replicate every other condition perfectly..."

"We don't want to take chances," Sean said. He looked at his mate, though, because the queens fell under her order.

"It's what we have," Sorka said. "In some ways, being forced to flamethrowers worked in our favor. We catch the missed tangles, and we are already in position to catch falling dragons or riders. I don't want to set monsters loose, and I know resources for the high tech science fields are dwindling. We'll adapt… and be thankful we won't be up to our eyeballs in little green dragon eggs." She could not help some disappointment, but it was as it would be.

Bay reached out for her hand, seeing Sorka's disappointment so clearly. "I'm sorry, dear. It's not the answer any of us wanted... but I'm glad you've found -- wait. _Catch_?! How -- " 

Sorka took her hand, then smiled brightly. "Our girls are so much larger than the rest… if a dragon doesn't get _between_ fast enough, or can't maintain flight after skipping back, we just… catch them. Fly under, rider laid flat on the neck, and the other dragon is over our backs. It's always straight back here, and usually a near-ground landing, but it saves the shoulder joints from trying to mangle a landing."

Bay tipped her head slightly, trying to envision that, and smiled at her despite the shocked edge of worry deep in her veins at the idea. "That has to be amazing to see, and so tricky to fly -- but that you can _do_ it doesn't surprise me at all." 

Nothing their dragonriders did surprised her, now. They were the best of the best of Pern's children, and she was so proud to be able to help them. 

She still wasn't expecting the next words out of Sorka's mouth. 

"Do you want to come and see some of the weyrling classes? You just got back South, you haven't seen any of the greens or blues..."

"I'd love to! The dragonets are so precocious when they're young," Bay answered, and Sean snorted at her again. 

"Least you didn't call them adorable or summat like that," he said when she looked at him, then got up, kissed his wife on the cheek, and headed towards the door. He turned around, though, almost in it, and he did smile at her. "Good to see you, Bay. Safe travels."

"Safe flying, Sean," she said back, rather than goodbye, and it gained her a smile from him before he left the room. 

"He's …. Well, we all changed when we impressed," Sorka said with a soft smile, loving her man even more now than ever. He could be so soft, so kind… but it was always covered in a practical sense of duty. "Come on; the weyrlings are always glad to show off."

She stood to escort Bay to the training areas, and Bay happily trotted along behind her, fascinated as always by anything with the dragons.


End file.
